Catching my balance.

February 2007

27 February 2007

We made it to Virginia! Whoo-hoo! 2300 miles is a long time in a car. (I keep thinking of that Modest Mouse song... eight hundred miles is a long time inside a car.... nine hundred miles is a long time inside a car.... a thousand a miles is a REALLY LONG TIME IN A CAR). We got here, unloaded P's stuff, returned the truck and trailer (that was traumatic) and went to bed-- just in time to be woken up Sunday to a blizzard. A real and actual snow storm. Which made going into DC to pack impossible. *sigh*. But I'm really happy to say that we made it, mishap-free, in a reasonable amount of time, ahead of the icky weather. It was actually lovely weather the whole way. (Though I have a lot to say about Texas. Later.) Of course, all of my stuff is still in DC and really really not packed, and me with no time to do so.... so I'm kind of panicking. And I can hardly see my desk for the pile of work that has accumulated in my absence.

But whatevah! We're here! No more airports! No more phone calls! Wheee!!!

17 February 2007

I'm about to go grab a couple hours' sleep before I get up to head out to the airport (Dulles..... ug) for my last flight to Arizona for at least a while. And most likely my last solo flight to AZ ever. Because this time tomorrow Phil and I will be in Sierra Vista fretting over how we're going to fit that last bit of stuff into the U-Haul.

I love road trips, though this one won't exactly have the leisurely meandering quality that I love best, as it will involve a large moving truck. Which, everyone planning to drive any major road between here and southeastern Arizona is now thanking their lucky stars, I will not be driving. It isn't that I'm a bad driver (I'm not), it's that I don't drive with any regularity (read: I have driven a car maybe ten times in the last 33 months. Okay, maybe twelve times. Are we counting parking?). It's one of those things that becomes second nature when you do it a lot, and is mind-blowingly nerve-wracking when you don't. In the last fifteen years I spent about seven of them in New York City (where I drove about once a year), four in Southeast Asia (where I had a motorcycle, but drove a car exactly one time-- my flatmate's in Cambodia. Which I parked. I thought I would DIE), and six months in France (where I drove for about two hours, once). There was that time in Ithaca, where I drove quite a bit, but I left Ithaca almost three years ago (thank god for small mercies).

In short, driving makes me nervous.

I think that interrupting the normal flow of driver accustomization that occurs when most people finish high school and drive into their adulthood (I rode into mine on the L train) not only puts that skill set on ice, it allows the realization that cars are dangerous frigging things to crystalize. I have a hard time forgetting that I am operating a WMD when I'm driving. I drive like someone's grandmother: slow, cautious. People just freak me out with the way they drive-- oblivious to the power they hold.

Not driving is one of the reasons I took the job that brought me to D.C. I wanted, above all things, to get rid of the car I had in Ithaca. I wanted to move someplace that I could be carless. D.C. is mostly a place you can be carless.... though I was carless in NYC for the entire time I was there (except the last six weeks or so, but that is a whole other story), and I never missed it. Because, you know, you're in New York. Who cares what's going on anywhere else? But here.... eh.... I think a lot about other places that one might need a car to get to.

Still. I am a little out of practice. But about to get a whole lot more into practice. And either way, I am so okay with it, I can't even describe. Because driving cross country is a very, very low price to pay. I'll see y'all in about ten days ;)

16 February 2007

Moving is, perhaps, the one great consistency (besides my parents and my friend Julee) in my post-high school life. In general, I migrate once a calendar year. Since 1989 the longest I have been in residence at a single address was a little less than two years. The shortest at a place that I wasn't visiting was three weeks. Moving is the bane of my existence; I can't seem to shake it. It is like a fungus-- even when you think you've gotten rid of it, it comes back. When I moved to D.C. almost three years ago the plan was for this to be it. I wasn't going to move again until I was moving into a house that I owned.

I am about to move for the fourth time in thirty-three months. That's once every eight months, so obviously my "this is it" plan didn't work. On the upside, I'm moving into a house. On the downside, it ain't mine. There is, of course, a real upside to this move... big enough to mitigate the unbridled horror of moving. Twice. Once cross country, once across town. And I'm very happy about that. Still.... I hate moving.

It's a pain to move always, but when you have no time to pack (as I don't) it's just chaotic. In the midst of all of this I ran out of boxes and tape (twice), so I headed down to Staples in the icky weather on Wednesday to get both. On the way back I was on the ever so packed bus that runs up Connecticut, and really not often enough. Jam. Packed. Sitting across from me was an elderly woman wearing a shower cap who had a young Indian man and his elderly, non-English-speaking father locked in conversation. And I mean locked in a head-lock kind of way. She kept making a sound like she was calling pigs or something. "hoooooooooWHEE!" The young man was doing his best to be polite. But at one point he just couldn't figure out what she was talking about, which is understandable since I couldn't either. She consoled him by saying, "Don't worry about it, son, I guess I'm a little drunk. I did have a little drinky-dinky-do or two." And then giggled to herself, fondly reminiscing about the drinky-dinky-do.

On the bus yesterday morning there was a man that stomped on the bus, yelled out a stream of curses, then turned around and stomped off the bus. I can't say as I was unhappy to see him go. When I take up residency in Virginia I won't be taking the city bus anymore-- I'll be metro-ing in from the 'burbs-- except to do work stuff around the District. I will be sometimes taking a suburban bus to/from the metro stop, though I'm not sure how much entertainment that will provide. I'm not sure how I feel about this; I'm not sure I'll have anything to blog about anymore.

An hour after I got to work the power went off, killing my plans for what to get done. *sigh* That's the second time in three days that I had my plans for project completion foiled by Pepco and the weather. On the upside, I used the time to clean my desk, making it possible for me to see my desk, which is kind of how I prefer it.

In other news, I woke up this morning to discover that my aloe plant decided it could not bear the pain and horror of living in the basement for one moment longer and attempted suicide. Which seems rather odd, plant deaths usually being rather slow and protracted if not the result of violence done upon them. Even more odd, it settled on the particularly unconventional plant suicide method of dashing its brains out on the tile floor after leaping from a great (well, maybe not great, but great enough) height. I woke up this morning to find it laying, sadly, in a pool of its own dirt. I have no idea how it got down there, no idea how it leapt over the little railing thing on the plant stand. I don't have pets, so it did this unaided. Silly, stupid aloe! If you could just hang on for another two weeks you will have a lovely window seat upon which to sun yourself! I attempted resucitation, but now I just have wait to see if it is going to die the more conventional slow, protracted death. Sigh.

On a final note (for this post anyway) I must note that Manolo the Shoeblogger has just given one of the best descriptions of academia I have seen in a long time:

The Manolo says, of the course, there are those who believe that one
would be foolish to give up the golden perks of academia, such as the
pleasures of frequently reading the papers in which the word
“hermeneutics” appears twice in the first sentence, once juxtaposed
next to the phrase “Gilligan’s Island”.

What? No more faculty meetings in which the professor of Marxist
marketing comes to blows with the elderly Emily Bronte scholar over the
matter of parking spaces?

I am so grateful to my super fantastic friend, the techne, for introducing me to the Manolo. Also, I am deeply jealous of the woman who wrote her question to the Manolo. If I were capable of baking that is what I would do. Also, those shoes are so cute.

15 February 2007

Somehow I never seem to cease to find the irony--and hypocrisy--of many of the stances taken by American society in the face of what they actually do. This article in the Guardian of London caught my eye. The first paragraph is a pretty sad indictment:

Children growing up in the United Kingdom suffer greater deprivation,
worse relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks
from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy
country in the world, according to a study from the United Nations.

But don't let's go patting ourselves on the back, my fellow Americans. Read the next paragraph.*

The UK is bottom of the league of 21 economically advanced countries
according to a "report card"' put together by Unicef on the wellbeing
of children and adolescents, trailing the United States which comes
second to last.

Ah yes. Think of the children. Seems to me that there is very little actual thinking of the children. There's an awful lot of holier than thou rabble rousing and freaking out about how having sex ed in schools or vaccinating your daughter against cervical cancer is going to turn kids into whores and deviants or whatever. But for all of that kids have worse relationships with their parents and are more likely to do just what you would hope they wouldn't do (ie drugs, drink, and unsafe sex) for all of that avoidance. Far worse than in, say, the Netherlands where prostitution and some drugs are legal. And was ranked first.

Oh my! Could it be that not sticking our heads in the sand could be a viable option? Sigh. I think I just find people who would rather have their daughter contract and possibly die from preventable cervical cancer than admit that one day she will have sex really really confusing. Or maybe criminally stupid.

*You can also see more about the report and our ranking on NPR's website, which includes this quote: "In almost all the categories, poorer nations such as Poland and the
Czech Republic fared better than the United States and Britain.".

14 February 2007

Nothing seems to put D.C. and its suburbs into a panic quite like the idea of precipitation occurring in the winter. I had never, before coming to D.C., been sent home from work for weather. Snow days were something that I associated only with school; it hadn't occurred to me that you could have snow days from work, but for extreme (and extremely rare) circumstances the only time up to moving here that I'd been told I didn't have to go to work was in Ithaca when we got three and a half feet of snow overnight. The city declared a state of emergency for a couple days while it tried to dig the town out and barred people from driving unless they were operating an emergency vehicle. I worked at the cable company and was told that I didn't have to come in, but since everyone knew I lived downtown (maybe a mile from the office) it was clear that my presence was expected (they were appreciative, but I didn't really feel like I had much choice). Three and a half feet overnight and my snow day was optional.

So I found it shocking when, my first winter in D.C., I was sent home early for an inch of snow. It was still falling, but after hours of little white flakes (the little ones that never give more than a dusting, not the big, fluffy, thick, wet flakes that mean business) there was only an inch on the ground at three in the afternoon. I mean I was literally stunned. To the point of not being able to speak for a moment. I looked outside at the swirling, light flakes that were destined to drift around in little eddies but never collect into an obstruction and thought, this is a joke, right? It was not. Moreover, we had a two hour delay for a snow "storm" only slightly more weighty soon afterwards. When I was a kid I used to pray for ten plus inch storms that started really falling at around 3am. If they started earlier than that the plows would have dealt with it and school would be on. Any less than ten inches and you could forget it. When I was in grad school the admin from the area studies program I was in retired. She noted that in almost thirty-five years of working for the university the campus had never closed for snow.

So I wasn't sure what to expect when I looked out the window yesterday morning-- the radio came on with a list of all the counties who had canceled school. There were delays in the counties closer to D.C. I looked outside to find.... nothing. Not a damn thing. The cancelations? For a winter storm warning. A warning. No actual snow. The threat of snow. It might snow later. And how much? It might snow an inch.

C-r-i-k-e-y.

Eventually it did snow. About half an inch. Run for the hills! Then it started sleeting and the fed sent everyone home early. My office was sent home early as well, but I had something that *had* to get done, so I ended up leaving almost at my normal time. I hauled a bunch of boxes home from the office with the plan to get some packing done, walking home with a luggage rolly cart thing full of boxes in the sleet, only to find.... no electricity. I check the fuse box. Nothing blown. Grrrrr..... I open the fridge and find it warm in there and realize it's been out all day-- probably since right after I left the house. Sigh. I decide to go to the gym-- hopefully it will be back on by the time I get back so I can pack, and so I won't freeze to death because after a full day without heat the place is getting cold. It occurs to me as well that if this keeps up too long the pipes might freeze, which, since I live in the basement, would be extraordinarily bad.

But it isn't on when I get home. Sigh. However, since it's after dark I can see that not everyone has lost power. The house where I live is, in fact, the demarcation line. The apartment building next door has power. The apartment building across the street has power. The street lights from the building next door down the hill are on. But the street lights from the house where I live up to the park are out, along with the four houses on the little cliff. Of which mine is the fourth. Apparently we are our own grid.

So I grab a book and head out to have some dinner. I listen to the messages on my phone and my landlady has left a message saying that the power was out and that Pepco said it would be back on around seven. It's already seven thirty. On the way home, around nine o'clock I see a bunch of Pepco trucks (making me wonder how they were planning to get the electricty on by seven when the trucks weren't in the neighborhood until nine?) and I ask one of the guys working what the deal is.... He doesn't know, could be an hour, could be four, and once it's on it may not stay on.

Great.

At home it's freezing. I always carry a maglight in my bag (years of living in developing countries where electrical service was sporadic) and I gather up a bunch of warm clothes and crawl under the covers hoping that the pipes and I don't freeze over night. The lights come on an hour later, happily, but the apartment was still way too cold to get anything done.... egads. And this morning the weather actually is bad-- all iced up, so the buses aren't really running. Today would be the day for the fed to give a snow day. The airports are all closed, all the schools are closed.

But no. A two hour delay. Sigh.

But today is Valentine's Day, and I have a wonderful Valentine, so, eh.... whatever ;)

07 February 2007

Here is a sentence I never thought that I would utter: I am moving to the suburbs. I'm going to follow it up with another sentence I never thought I would utter: I am moving to Virginia. My aversion to both the suburbs and Virginia is well known, but there it is: I am moving to the Virginia suburbs.

Since money is never a motivator for me (at least it never has been to
this point, which may be because real money has never been involved in
anything that I've been involved in... though I suspect that real money
has never been involved because it isn't something that motivates me.),
this is obviously about love. And happily (deliriously so), it is.
Because, you see, my beloved Phil is also moving to the Virginia suburbs.

After a year of living across the country from
each other and having spent (I recently figured out) 5% of the last
year actually with each other (that works out to a few days every two
months or so) we're going to close the distance from 2300 miles to
zero. How excited about this am I? I'm so excited that I'm ecstatically
happy to be moving to the Virigina suburbs. That is seriously happy.

This
turn of events, while being the end result of many months of prodding,
asking, applying, planning, scheming, and pursuing all sorts of things
here, there, elsewhere, whatever would get us in the same state,
unfolded with lightening speed, and is rolling along at the same swift
clip. He got the job Friday. Yeay! What do we do now? My apartment is
too small. I look on the internets to see if there are things to look
at in Virginia, see a lot of high rise apartments (listen to Phil
hyperventilating at the thought) and one lonely little house, email
about the house Saturday morning, see it Sunday morning, get a call
saying it's ours to rent Monday morning. Monday afternoon he is told
that he needs to be in his office in VA in two weeks. Five days ago I
was in despair at the ongoing physical separation, worried that it
would last months more. Now I'm trying to get everything in order to
move into a house together in ten days.Yeay!!

Not that we have ten days
to get ready to move. A few weeks ago, when this job wasn't on the
horizon and it had been almost six weeks since we'd seen each other we
decided to go to New York for a weekend for Valentine's Day. That would
be this weekend coming up. So we meet up in New York on Friday (yeay!
it's going to be soooo fun), I head back to DC & he heads back to
AZ on Monday.... then I head to AZ on Saturday and we drive to VA over
the next week, roll into town, unpack enough to have a bed to sleep in,
he starts work, and the next weekend we get all of my stuff out of my
place in DC.

So it is the close of the era of the Birdcave,
and the charming bits about it. The bathroom a chez nous is in plain
site, there are far fewer places where Phil will hit his head. On to
the era of the Orange Line! Which is coming on with a quickness. Egads,
I gotta pack. Anyone have any boxes laying around? More importantly
anyone free on March 3rd & could help load up on DC or unload in
Arlington? Oh, and did I mention that this week has been the week of
the best news ever? Yeay!!!

As a side note, I think we're both
feeling like the universe is working with us, everything falling into
place, one thing after another. Sometimes the universe does have a
sense of humor, and I'm eternally grateful, but I think I'm also being
chided (which I will take happily)-- when I got off the metro to take a
look at the house I thought, hmmmm.... this looks so familiar. Which is
odd, because outside of going to the airport I've only been to Virginia
half a dozen times, so nothing but National should look familiar. Then
I realized why it looked familiar: because I *had* been there before. That would be when I said:

Stepping out of the metro in Virginia (and Maryland, for that matter)
is like stepping off onto another planet. Walking from the metro to the
theater kind of freaked me out a little.

Home sweet home! I believe my city-lovin' snarkiness just nipped me in the butt. ;) Which is just fine with me.

04 February 2007

Winter has arrived in D.C. It's late this year, as it seems to be everywhere, and I'm glad to see that the planet hasn't completely given up on the season thing. I'm not a big fan of being cold, but I was still disturbed by the seventy degree days in December.

Still. It's winter and it's bloody cold. My apartment is cozy in a fair number of ways, but temperature isn't one of them. It's great in the summer-- I hardly ever turned on the a/c, which was kind of a ridiculous thing in any case, a tiny foot wide unit in the living room. I admit to having a high tolerance for heat and humidity (all I had in Danang was a ceiling fan and I wasn't much fussed), but a big part of it is that 50% of my apartment is below ground.

Not exactly a stretch to say that the same effect makes my tootsies cold in the winter. The heating in the place are the pipes by the ceiling, which works fine enough down to about 35 degrees. Dipping below that, however, starts getting uncomfortable. And the last week or so it's been getting well below 35 degrees-- single digits overnight, getting up to 30 in the day, but feeling like ten + degrees cooler with the wind chill. And while I have a high tolerance for the heat I have zero tolerance for the cold. I hate being cold. Hate. It. It makes me cranky and depressed and if I get too cold I get weepy. I have terrible circulation (yes, yes, cold hands warm heart and all that. My heart must be on fire), so for most of any normal northern winter I have very little feeling in my fingers, toes, and nose. I am currently wearing two pairs of socks, one of them polartec thermal things from LL Bean, leggings, jeans, a long sleeved shirt, a turtleneck sweater, a sweatshirt, and a hat. I'm in my bedroom.

And you know what? I'm cold. I can't feel my feet. I used to think about the Peace Corps until I found out that they might send you someplace cold, like the central Asian steppes. (I have a friend who went to Khazakstan with the Peace Corps). This would not do at all. I was all into it when it was about heat rash and malaria, but the thought of being very very cold for extended periods of time... just couldn't face the prospect. (I went to grad school instead. Three years in Khazakstan would have been a better choice, but that wasn't obvious at the moment I was making my decision).

I was going to go to the gym today, but I had to do something this morning that involved walking a few miles in the cold early enough that it was in the low teens and that spent the sum total of my ability to deal with the outside world for the day. It's supposed to be colder tomorrow, and each morning I have to fight the urge to wear not-very-office-appropriate cold weather gear better suited for skiing. On the upside, my little office has an electric baseboard heater right behind my chair, which usually defrosts my toes.

01 February 2007

Well, duh. I mean... doesn't this seem amazing (and not in a wowee! that's amazing! kind of way, but in a holy shit, that is jacked up kind of way):

The study, officially being issued Thursday, says workplace policies
for families in the United States are weaker than those of all
high-income countries and many middle- and low-income countries.
Notably, it says the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in
the survey that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave;
the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.

For a country whose political rhetoric is steeped in talk of "the family," one does have to wonder how families are supposed to occur when a woman doesn't have the right to be paid if she takes the day off to birth her sprogs.